How long has trampolining been around

Later, activities such as diving and freestyle skiing emerged. Gymnastics took over the sport, creating an aura and a sensation, which saw the sport become fun, popular and more widespread, lading to its official adoption as an Olympic game in the year in Australia.

Since those early years of the development of the sport, it has been used to train the United Navy Flight Scholars, who intend to become the pilots of the seals, navigators and explorers. NASA uses it for astronaut training and for other competitive and thrilling recreational purposes. Trampolines have been welcomed in the United States as a physical training education program and has also found way into the private entertainment centers.

Owing to the increasing number of lawsuits related to the dangers and the injuries that come about in the sport, it has been relegated to the gymnasium, and only conducted by certified trainers. The glamour therefore associated with the sport has waned over time and has consequently led to the decline of the American prominence in the sport, unlike in the early years. Since becoming an Olympic sport in , more countries have taken up the challenge and trained their personnel.

China is an example; it trained its participants in less than a decade. By jumping on a trampoline, two things happen; your full body is utilized in balance and your brain releases dopamine in your brain. This dopamine triggers senses in your brain and gives you a sort of exhilaration. But how did they come to be? Who made the idea of creating such a simple object?

Together we will go through a full history of Trampolines and run down their family all the way to your local Rebounderz. Both men were scholars and athletes at the University of Iowa. They had noticed that trapeze artists had designed a sort of net to catch them after a trick. What interested Nissen and Griswold was the bounce that was created when the performers hit the mat.

Immediately Nissen and Griswold began to design their own net, one that would be thicker, stronger, and create a much more prominent bouncing effect. The men fashioned their own invention, one with stretched canvas, springs, and an iron bar to hold it all together.

This is how the trampoline was born. The Name Both Nissan and Griswold were talented gymnasts and saw the potential that could be utilized. Nissen, an accomplished diver at the University of Iowa as well, used the trampoline as a training device. Let us try to answer those questions…. The idea of throwing people in the air has been around long before modern trampolines were invented.

People from the Arctic regions, the Inuits, invented first trampolines from walrus skin acting as trampoline mats and other people acting as springs , most likely Native Americans did something similar as well. Some rumors say that circus performer and trapeze artist Du Trampolin came up with first version of trampoline.

First, he used trapeze net as a safety net if he would fell. But, he found out that if trapeze net is intentionally tightened, it would act as bouncing bed to jump high in the air. His daughter, Dian, and wife, Annie, a Dutch acrobat, were with him throughout much of the growth of the sport and business. Dian became a champion athlete and also a fitness expert. Along with her mother and father, she starred in a series of videos focusing on lighter exercises for seniors, as well as pilates and other training techniques.

Her father died at 96 in , but she believes he is never far from her. David Kindy is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian.

He is also a journalist, freelance writer and book reviewer who lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The military latched on to the trampoline as a training device for pilots, to allow them to learn how to reorient themselves to their surroundings after difficult air maneuvers. Could he create a contraption that would allow a person to keep on bouncing?

Nissen's "Tumbling Device," patented March 6, U. Patent 2,, Nissen would go on to receive 44 patents, many of them related to his tumbling device, and helped create the gymnastic sport of trampolining, which combines acrobatics with bouncing. NASA astronauts play Spaceball. Courtesy of Dian Nissen The pilot was Scott Carpenter , who would later become one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.